Book News: NYC To Pay Occupy Wall Street For Destroyed Books

Books from the Occupy Wall Street library damaged in the November 15 eviction of Zuccotti Park and recovered from a New York city sanitation depot.

Stan Honda
/ AFP/Getty Images

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

New York City agreed to pay Occupy Wall Street for the destruction of books during a November 2011 police raid on Zuccotti Park. In a settlement Tuesday, the city agreed to pay the protesters and their lawyers over $230,000. The city also gave an almost-apology: "Defendants acknowledge and believe it is unfortunate that, during the course of clearing Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011, books were damaged so as to render them unusable, and additional books are unaccounted for."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings author Maya Angelou spoke to The Daily Beast in an interview published Wednesday: "I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me. English is a beautiful language, don't you think?"

Jack Kerouac's online dating profile, from the Barnes & Noble books blog: "On a typical Friday night I am...probably off fuming and screamin' in a mountain nook, experiencing wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm."

"Sometimes we felt as if we were actually getting somewhere, but the truth was, like most people, we were just marking time." — from a new short story by San Miguel author T.C. Boyle in The New Yorker.

Last week, Google sold Frommer's Travel Guides back to Arthur Frommer after buying it less than a year ago. But according to paidContent, it kept all of the social media data.

Melville House laments that the media has declared the following bookish things dead this week: books, brick-and-mortar book stores, online book stores, the American Author, travel guides and cursive.